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50 Epiphanies
Friday, February 24th, 2012
Fifty thought-provoking haiku, gathered from a lifetime of encounters with nature. Each captures a mystical moment in which the commonplace takes on an added dimension of meaning. Illustrated with artwork by the author.
Title: 50 Epiphanies
Author: Gary Tillery ‘73 is also the author of The Cynical Idealist: A Spiritual Biography of John Lennon, published by Quest Books in 2009, and Working Class Mystic: A Spiritual Biography of George Harrison, published by Quest in 2011. Other writings include Darkling Plain, a collection of short stories set in Vietnam, and two comic detective novels, Death, Be Not Loud and To an Aesthete Dying Young. Tillery is also an artist. His most prominent work is featured in Chicago’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Wabash Plaza. He sculpted the bust of Steve Allen for the Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood. He also has created such works as T. Denny Sanford at the Sanford Children’s Hospital in Sioux City, South Dakota, and Luis Aparicio at U. S. Cellular Field (both through the Rotblatt-Amrany Studio), as well as They Also Serve—a tribute to POWs, now in the permanent collection of the National Veterans Art Museum. He resides in the Chicago area with his wife and son.
Publisher: CreateSpace (February 8, 2012)
Price: $12.00
Description: Paperback, 74 pages
ISBN: 978-1470032142
Information: www.amazon.com
John Lennon called himself a working class hero. George Harrison was a working class mystic. This book gives an honest, in-depth view of Harrison’s journey from a blue-collar childhood to his role as a world-famous spiritual icon. It was with conscious commitment that Harrison journeyed to India, studied sitar with Ravi Shankar, practiced yoga, learned meditation from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and became a devotee of Hinduism. George worked hard to subdue his own ego and to understand the truth beyond appearances. He preferred to keep a low profile, but his empathy for suffering people led him to spearhead the first rock-and-roll super event for charity. And despite his wealth and fame, he was always delighted to slip on overalls and join in manual labor on his grounds. At ease with holy men discussing the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, he was ever the bloke from Liverpool whose father drove a bus, whose brothers were tradesmen, and who had worked himself as an apprentice electrician until the day destiny called.
Saigon, 1968…a crossroads on the darkling plain of war. Gordon Hunter arrives with stark images from the evening news still fresh in mind. In a series of interrelated short stories, he discovers the very real war behind those images, the very real people caught up in it, and the hollowness of glory.
Roger Collier is a failed poet, failed painter, and failing sculptor. But that’s not the worst of his troubles. When he’s found dead in his Pebble Beach home, dispatched by a well-played five-iron, the police say the killer is a pretty blonde model. Jack Savage suspects that it was one of four critics who wrote blistering reviews of Collier’s work, and then discovered new levels of hell when he repaid them with “getting even” tactics. As he pursues his hunch, Jack finds himself victimized by a psychotic stalker who subjects him to the same tactics, then kidnaps his unruly dog. The trouble is, all four of the critics have iron-clad alibis, and Jack is not so sure he wants the dog back.
Jack Savage is a private eye whose turf is California’s Monterey Peninsula. No one tries harder than “Monterey Jack,” but he unfortunately labors under two handicaps — he is a neophyte, and he happened to be born under a very strange star. Life, for Jack, is a dizzying succession of square pegs and round holes. His first case is so embarrassingly simple — find a locket lost by two Mexican women visiting the peninsula as tourists. Yet he soon finds himself ensnared in a dangerous web that links the CIA, a dominatrix, sinister visitors from Taiwan, and a Silicon Valley company with its super-secret “stealth bomb.” All this, while being upstaged by an inscrutable dog with its own agenda.
A radio playlist could easily follow John Lennon’s “Mind Games” with “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.” But comparing the two, it becomes obvious that Lennon had more in common with the great thinkers of any age than with the songwriters who were his contemporaries. “Cynical Idealist” reveals, for the first time, the spiritual odyssey of this extraordinary man. Out of a turbulent life, from his troubled, working-class childhood throughout his many roles — Beatle, peace advocate, social activist, househusband — Lennon managed to fashion a philosophy that elevates the human spirit and encourages people to work, individually and collectively, toward a better world. Like Socrates, Lennon wanted to stimulate people to think for themselves. “There ain’t no guru who can see through your eyes,” he sings in “I Found Out.” “Cynical Idealist” beautifully articulates this and the other lessons John Lennon passed along through his songs and through the example of his life.